Living the Live in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta

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Somehow we are always trying to establish a continuum in our Life. The things we like we invite to stay with us forever and at the same time we immediately want to get rid of the shadow parts. We always look for the unchangeable in the changeable. But now what when we are seriously looking for an answer on: Who am I? Of course, even in our meditations we act the same as we always do: we position our-self as the unchangeable, watching the changeable. This way we still act like we are used to.

Look at a baby that is helplessly waiting for care. Without any assistance the newborn will die pretty soon. From our first moments in this world we need care, on all levels of existence. For a grown up it is rather simple. You are hungry and you find a way to buy some food and you will eat it soon after. Now look at the difference between you as a baby and as a grown up.

During the years you have learned to talk, to walk, to plan, to work, to cook, even to digest properly. You have learned countless methods to build yourself a working physical state with on top of the cake a partner to love, a comfortable home, proper education, a job , money, healthcare, a pension-plan. You easily can fill up this list with many other desires. Picture yourself as the little baby and now. Over the years you have build up a full body-worldsystem of identification, all set up in a perfect functioning dream of space and time.

For a baby there is no world. Even objects appear to be blurry colour-patterns. It is not made to survive on itself. But from day one the body will learn itself to survive. Identifications will grow, building up safety, each at a time. Noticeably the Idea of a separate existing body in a world of objects will appear to be. And this is how it should function otherwise the body, THE IDEA, would die. The body is there and has learned to live and survive. It is perfectly fit for it.

For a body the natural knowledge and learning-curve how to survive has to be born out of something deeper. And that is the Idea of separation, and therefore the urge to protect itself. How come? Well, in essence the birth of the body is THE EXPRESSION of separation itself already. This whole physical state IS build on fear of death and is urging itself to overcome death, because IT undoubtedly KNOWS there is just LIFE, as in CONSCIOUSNESS itself! Why would your heart beat, why would your longs function, why are your organs and blood doing its job. Yes, they all work together to survive death!

The physical world is build upon THE IDEA of mortality. Everything has been created to live a long and happy life with the avoidance of pain and sorrow leading to sickness and death. Deep down we know all this. Birth and death are part of the same IDEA. We even create the idea of an eternal soul, a heaven or a someone who can reach enlightenment, or we like to live the buddha as the unchangeable watcher on the hill. Even then, we want to survive.

And it is all so very natural….

When you sit on your couch and you start to meditate like the best you can there is one thing left to understand. You are THIS, the IDEA that created the unchangeable in the changeable. This has to be seen, This has to be understood. Probably now you think. ah.. I know what he means: I am both, I am all there is, I am beyond the world of objects and therefore beyond the changeable in the unchangeable. This is the tricky mind, because now you have to take the next step. A step into the abyss. And like a teenage girl who wants to experience her first love, you first will know when you have taken the invitation to jump into the ocean.

Let me tell you this. All my articles refer direct to what you ARE: THIS. Not there, not here; just THIS is it. THIS what ‘ you ‘ARE, nothing more, nothing less. Within all THIS, there has to be understood something very important if you want to realize your true nature. And when you really get into this, not just as a solid thought, but as in the core of existence itself, there is not much left to get, to reach or even to be.

Before we go deeper into THIS, I will ask you to close your eyes for about 5 minutes. Within just a small piece your daily routine that I want you to relax and just observe without being focused on something. Just be.

Now, in these 5 minutes you have experienced what I call the physical state. This is the state of Time and Space. You have noticed Time, because you let the little meditation happen for about 5 minutes. You created a past, a now and a future for your exercise. You did this in a comfortable position, laying or sitting in a room, a house or on a bench in the park with your smart phone within reach to read the article. You will also observe the world around you: objects in any shapes and seizes. This is your created Space. Time and Space. that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

yoga

I remember my own moments of doing nothing. I went to Buddhist groups, took meditation classes, I did Yoga and was very serious to be real deep and sacred with my meditations. I was pretty good on sitting on my couch, for hours and hours, just with some traditional slow-paced walking brakes. This was how I learned to do it during my Buddhist classes. Later on, working with Yoga and even the years with my teacher of Advaita Vedanta, Alexander Smit, I kept doing these exercises ongoing. One day it left me, like it had found me once and I learned that meditation practice is great to relax a lot of mind-clutter, but when you really want to realize yourself, it also can create one of the biggest illusions.

This reality-state, your time and space creation, has the mechanism of change. Nothing remains the same, not even a split second. Countless molecules are constant on the move and even your body is part of this dance of change like any other object. Everything you can observe from the universe, including thoughts and feelings, is on the move to grow, to change, to disappear, to be born. We cry for joy when new life arrives and we encounter a great loss when a beloved one suddenly dies. Attachment is part of the physical existence. We get attached to our language, habits, surrounding, people, even the label of coffee and toothpaste. We even prefer to follow a more or less pattern of routines, day in, day out. Not only we humans live like that, but also animals and even plants, that follow the rhythm of the seasons.

Somehow we are always trying to establish a continuum in our Life. The things we like we invite to stay with us forever and at the same time we want to get rid immediately of the shadow parts of life. We always look for the unchangeable in the changeable. But now what when we are seriously looking for an answer: Who am I?

“One final step. Not a small one, a big one. A huge step I have to make, but then I have reached the state of self-realisation.” This is what I often hear from seekers looking for Truth. But is this the way how you will get what you want? Just making one final effort like fixing the one light in the Christmas tree to let all the other lights shine at the same time? This is what I explained to you last week. Now I will show you that in reality there are no steps to be taken. You are the problem till YOU have realised that.

It is rush-hour and you are busy hurrying to get home in time for dinner. You are driving by car and all around you it is packed with cars. Everyone is eager to reach their destinations as soon as possible. Now if you would observe yourself in direct view by satellite,, like on Google Earth, you would see thousands of cars driving around each other like ants doing their massive work. There is a constant activity of cars on the move. Picture it.

Now you get caught in a severe traffic-jam. Your lane of cars is coming to a standstill. There you are, waiting on spot x, not even moving a single inch. Well, at that very moment: are you still considering yourself part of the ongoing traffic-event, or are you out? Now when you look from above there is still an immense moving of the ants, but you and some others, the 1% of the travelers during rush-hour seem to have stopped. So, are you in or out of the game?

Evening Rush Hour (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You are THE cause of everything

Sure, now you see yourself as part of the rush-hour event. In fact you are one of the ‘victims’ even. You even might be part of the cause of the traffic-jam, an accident. So in a spiritual sense: is it you waiting for the tow-car entering the playfield to fix the situation, an activity that will let you rejoin the riding party? Or were you already part of the situation and was your car, coming to a standstill, still part of the flow of traffic itself? Even when your car didn’t move? When you look carefully, using your satellite – view, you would find your non-driving car to be a major part of the rush-hour itself. Perhaps now you would notice, you even are the cause of the traffic-jam itself!

In the middle of a traffic-jam

This is actually how you should act on your trip for self-realisation. As soon as you come to a point that you realise you are “on your way” to find answers(s) on ‘Who am I’ you already have come far beyond a point of no return. In the middle of a traffic jam, you wait and act accordingly: there is nothing else to do. Just realise this: the fact that you have positioned yourself in a car that is stranded in a traffic-jam, doesn’t mean you are not already part of the process to find answers. That last part you are looking for to connect the dots, that last part of action that lets you come home from your trip, is just there because your Idea made it to appear. In fact YOU make the traffic come to a standstill by your Idea of the one missing %, so that you can think you are no longer part of the traffic, while in reality you just have to realise you already have connected the dots. Way long before even there were rush-hours and christmas-lights.

You might consider Self-realisation as a moment of a sudden experience of Truth: finally the dots are connected. Before that moment there were just a few glimpses of a universal truth and now it can’t be missed: you have realised your true potential, Truth itself. The parts have become one piece. This is what I often read. You, the seeker of God, self-realisation or what you might name your path for ultimate knowledge, is often promised a step into light from darkness. That sounds interesting, but are you in the dark?

Perhaps you remember the string of lights in a Christmas tree. A whole year-long the lights were put back in a box, safely kept on a shell in the attic, and now, the next Christmas-time coming up, it refused to work. With a good touch of Christmas-stress you started to check every single light. Most of the time you would find one light not to be connected, preventing all other lights to work. You gave all attention you had and now it worked! From no lights at all into one huge shining colourful bright Christmas tree.

First you had no light and by fixing just one connection, they all would shine. All the lights on the string were depended on that one single candle that was on the run. In this case 99 of the 100 candles were functioning properly, but couldn’t come to work because they were depended of the one candle that had stepped out of the game.

This is what I often hear: just one courageous step and I will know. It is just the one step that is so hard to make. And it is true, in your world of Idea’s you are so much busy looking for that one lose candle that it has become part of the obsession. Fix the one and all will shine.

Candles (Photo credit: magnuscanis)

Waiting for mr 100

But is it? Is that the ultimate truth? Like there is nothing, just potential? Just the other 99 working lights ready to work, waiting for mr. 100? In this case you would say: I have everything ready in my house, waiting for the party. Everything is there. You are just waiting for the guests to arrive. Or like the string of lights is ready to invite the electricity to do its work. Still, this somehow suggests that everything, but one, is ok. It is ready and now you aim for the last candle, closing the dots.

Now at the same time this situation implies that 99% in your spiritual believe-system is depending on the 1 % that makes it to work. But why should you have 99% waiting for just 1% to make it function? Well this also happens when you download a file into your PC and the last 1% holds and wait to be downloaded. In this case the 99% has no use, but in your human potential it is something completely the other way around. It is just your Idea that you need one step to realise your true potential. In fact you already made that one a long time ago.

Do you really want to live forever? And this preferably in a long series of happy moments? Is this really where you are looking for: a life without complications, pain and sorrow? A life where every move turns into a blossoming flower? And you as a radiant beacon of joy in the middle of it? How nice this would be? Despite my talks, that challenges are an important way-point of a spiritual healthy life, I have noticed resentment against this not to ignored part of a so-called ‘spiritual’ life. Some of you feel uncomfortable by the idea, that each cloudy moment in life is a huge invitation to get ‘to know yourself ‘. Am I therefore favorably talking about the fruits of a miserable life or even the benefits of death?? Well, not al all! But in the same moment in where you accept death , you will embrace Life. And that is pure joy! And in case you already have forgotten it: YOU ALREADY LIVE FOREVER!

Q: When I concentrate on THE Hearth, I feel joy, not sorrow. I start to dance, I feel alive and I want to share my happiness with the whole world. Then there is no space for sorrow and pain, then there is just happiness. And because we have to live THE Heart I notice less suffering in my life. So when you start to talk that I am even responsable for all the misery in the world, I am sorry but, this is one step to far to understand. I can’t be blamed for it.

A: When you see the misery in the world, hear it, taste it, you take notice of it and it becomes totally YOUR ‘s. At that very moment you invite the world into your life as in a game with a ball, your feet and a field to play on. Problem is, long before that you already had planned to enter the play-ground. You already had invited yourself as a separate human being into a game called Life! ‘Your’ life, as a result of your bodily experience on one side and, the word, like the body created by your senses, on the other side of the playfield. Two sides, one huge mistake, one immense identification: give it up. Now!

Q: So when I see misery on my tv or on the internet I just turn the tv of?

A: Well for sure you could do that but, then you will have to try to forget what you saw. Luckily this is what you already do very often even unnoticed, because you are quite selective in your portion of unhappiness. So please, keep on living THE Heart, enjoy and have fun. By the way I am pretty sure you mean: you live according your Heart, not THE Heart.

Q: Explain?

A: Why? How can YOU live THE Heart? I better want you to explain it to me?

Q: It is a matter of speaking. I know that we are THE Heart, undivided. I mean when I point my attention to my Heart, I feel joy.

A: YOU say, I quote: when I point to MY Heart I feel joy. This is exactly why I know that there is still something to realise for you. When there is still a sense of I , in a body, with a Heart, feeling joy, there is still THE perception of separation. There is still you living in your world. There is YOU and a WORLD: two parts. Do understand me well: I love to see you happy, and I know you are seriously loving your life. And of course you are not to be blamed for the misery of the world. Not even for the hard parts of your own life. That were you are to be blamed for is that you still live in this misery!

A: When you dance of joy you will get tired and eventually you will end up stumbling and hurting yourself. It is still part of the Life experience. Even on the battlefield flowers will grow. That is how Life works. It is you who made it to appear: you the player and the game on a field. Accept that in this perception, next to the moments of joy, you will get hurt anyway. Your identification is that you always try to avoid being hurt instead of experiencing the game. You think you have moments of joy but to be honest THEY ARE JUST THIN BRAKES BETWEEN TWO MOMENTS OF MISERY. It is like that, because you don’t invite Life, but you try to avoid pain. And now every time when you get hurt, you are generously invited to experience death, just to become alive! Now you know all this I invite you to live your life by accepting death. Accept death and you will live a life of joy, unnoticed as joy. Then you are THAT. Take your time to understand this.

In my last articles I talked about how you should deal with ‘sorrow and pain ‘. Both an invitation to, andeven essential parts of the road that will show you ”your’ true nature. Difficult situations in Life ‘happen’ to all of us. And each time it is a challenge as in a great possibility to realize ‘who WE are.’ When I talk about Love, the Heart, Blessing and Bliss, I get nice comments, likes and other remarks. The other way around, talking about pain, suffering and even Death, it suddenly keeps quiet. Too bad because it is really of the utmost importance to understand that the impact of unwanted confrontations with Life are the gateway to Heaven itself. Let me share this following conversation with you all.

Q: I feel pretty much uncomfortable with your latest stories. Of course I know that Life confronts me with pain and even suffering, it is part of it. It is just that I want to concentrate on the wonderful things Life has to offer. I don’t want to Identify with sorrow and the inevitable bumpy events that pass by.

A: Without Death there would be no Life. Death has compassion with you. Every time when Life hits you, something Dies, and there is a natural act of surviving this sudden Death. You then try to overcome your problems by Living them or, you avoid them in one way or another. Avoiding even means you often don’t realize that you have put yourself into a difficult, painful place. You even don’t know you did this yourself in the first place. You get sick, not on purpose, you lose a beloved one in the cause of an accident, you lose your job, your house all because of the economy.

In all these cases it is still YOU and THE WORLD as in two connected but separate parts of existence. This Idea of Reality took you far, far away from Home.

Estes Park in Rocky Mountains, Colorado. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q: So we are even responsible for what can strike us in Life unexpectedly. Like a hurricane for instance?

A: YOU are always responsible, no matter what!

Q: That isn’t fair to me. When a hurricane wipes out my house, or even takes one of my loved ones away, I really have nothing to do with it.

A: Where would the hurricane be without you?

Q: What you mean?

A: Where would the hurricane be without you? Well come on, get deeper into this conversation. You don’t want to blame yourself for the turmoil the hurricane brings into your life and I say, well where would the hurricane be without you?

Q: It would still be there, but I would witness it from a distance, like on television.

A: This means you are still there. When I watch the news on TV about the latest hurricane-disasters in Oklahoma I am still part of the event itself. As a witness, clear. I even haven’t been In Oklahoma in my life, I don’t know anyone there, but I am still watching the news. So this makes me part of the event. In third hand, but it still shows up in my’ Life. This appearance makes me responsible, no matter what. It is me who let it happen.

Q: I am going on a hike in the Rocky Mountains this summer. During that few weeks I don’t watch the news, no radio, and my telephone is just for emergencies and to check the weather. Lets say, a tsunami would strike Indonesia during that time, and I don’t know of it. Would I still be responsible for the disaster?

A: You are not responsible for the things that never show up in your life. What isn’t there, doesn’t exist. Try to understand this thoroughly!

Q: Then I come home, and I read the news about the tsunami?

A: Inviting this news into your Life is already identifying with it. Is this wrong? Of course not. You let it show up. You could go and live in a monastery in Nepal, no television, internet even no telephone around. And even then, or even in those Rocky mountains, everything that rises up as ‘your world ‘ is your responsibility. It is neither the government or God that is responsible for what YOU invite YOURSELF into Life. YOU are THAT and THAT is YOU. You are the one that let it be there. Always!

Tropical Cyclone Bingiza (Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video)

Q: Now that I know that I am responsible for everything that shows up in my Life, even the tsunami or hurricane I watch on the news, how would this get me closer to my true nature?

A: Everything, every moment is an invitation to celebrate Life. This Knowing: this ALL is ME. This ME is ALL there is, this is where YOU come into action. At first there is a World with a hurricane and you watch the news, then there just will be a hurricane and then it will just be YOU. At that point YOU will KNOW.

The World around often seems so hard, so cruel. While at the same time we feel so gentle, so humble, ready to share our love with everything that visits our Life. I agree that sickness, poverty, unemployment, bankruptcy, divorces and death are not the life-experiences we prefer but, at the same time, we all get our fine share of crisis while being on planet earth. What can we do about it? Or better, do we need to do something about it? It is a question I often get. A quest of Life I remember myself so well. I have been there. All the way. Nearly all of us invite confrontation in life, and then we ask ourselves this question: why is this world not more to my liking, not more how I would have wished it for? Why can it be so harsh at moments?

The good part is: there is an explanation to everything. Let us start where we all start to live our problems. Yes, we all because we all learn to act in this world like being a person in a body, called whatever is our name. When we are at the age of 2 or 3, in the short period when we have learned the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’, we also know our name, speaking it out loudly while pointing at our chest. From here we find our-self as a separated person in the form of a body as part of the world in which we live. Basically this is the identification where most of us will stay till death ends this manifestation. In fact our name, and this yes or no, are the result of identification. An identification that will come up as the setup for our defenses to survive in an outside world that, acts unexpected and not always in our favor.

Worlds Apart (Photo credit: Sony200boy)

We go to school, learn skills, get jobs, a career, a partner, children, a house, health-insurance and a pension-plan: from children-playground to huge castles with sometimes even an empire. The bigger our castle, the better defense we have, the more power we think we need to withstand Life. It sounds harsh but, mainly this is what we do. This is our life: we just want to survive in a world that can and will bring us unexpected disasters.

We might be lucky and build up a castle with the best defenses of the world. Somehow there never even shows up an enemy near the gates. Life begins and ends like a field of flowers. It happens. We all know one or two like that. Unfortunately its just for the happy few of us because, usually our invaders are stronger and more cunning than we are. They exactly know how to take down our defenses. They exactly know how to press the button to open the gate. Just one single event in a split of a second and our defenses will go down. We usually immediately start to repair our walls and canons. Now even stronger with more escape-routes. We take other jobs, other partners and everything that we need to feel ourselves more comfortable with. We even sometimes invite a more spiritual path to understand the meaning of Life. Again unfortunately we just start to check that same invading world that, a moment ago has taken down our walls. While first we now should ask ourselves the question: why did we build that castle in the first place? The realisation that our bodily appearance, as an object in the middle of a world of other objects, is already our biggest defensive castle. It is still one giant step too far at that moment. And here we rebuild again and, again.

No, first we try to become friends with the world. We invite the world in our life. From problems we learn, we call them challenges and so we start to refurbish our houses with furniture from which we secretly hope it will last a life-time. We give them names like feelings, heart, blessing and connection. All pondered with affection. From now on we share our power with the world. Our new defenses we call love and acceptance. We have given up the power trip by not fighting every unwanted phenomena that enters our life. We have found a new way to deal with life-events, to embrace them. Good? Yes but, just for some.

Sometimes we get struck by lightning and there seems no escape. Nowhere to go and nowhere to come. No escape? Is there really nothing at that very moment of loss. No there is not. Better, this having no escape, no tools left to rebuild our castle, is our freedom! Our loss can become the beginning of a new adventure. THE best adventure of our live is ready to embark now.